


The Trick Is To Keep Breathing

by gemjam



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Chris Argent Appreciation Week, Established Relationship, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Starting Over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 20:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15670917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gemjam/pseuds/gemjam
Summary: When they leave Beacon Hills, they just keep driving, hoping that distance will break the hold of the ghosts and the monsters.-For Day 2 Chris Argent Appreciation Week -New Beginnings





	The Trick Is To Keep Breathing

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot get the art to embed here for some reason so here's a link to it on my tumblr - [cover art](http://gemjam.tumblr.com/post/176949264416/the-trick-is-to-keep-breathing-chris)

When they leave Beacon Hills, they just keep driving, hoping that distance will break the hold of the ghosts and the monsters.

They’ve been on the road for weeks when they see the _For Sale_ sign on a derelict looking road in the middle of the wilderness. Chris turns down it without a second thought. They have to stop moving some time.

The broken-down cabin suits their moods perfectly. Chris puts in an offer and it’s accepted immediately. The old owners can’t wait to get rid of it. Chris spends the summer fixing it up while Stiles spends a lot of time staring out over the lake, thinking too hard on all of their losses. He doesn’t have the ability store it away like Chris does, to put it into something productive like building a life for themselves. He watches Stiles and he knows that he doesn’t believe they deserve it. Chris can’t fix him so he fixes the cabin instead, hoping somehow that Stiles can heal with it. That they both can.

Chris works long days and then he strips off his sweat soaked clothes as the sun goes down, jumping naked into the lake to cool off and wash away the day. The cabin is off the grid, all the water comes from here anyway, the electricity from a generator that’s temperamental at best. He swims out into the middle of the lake and floats on his back, watching the colours of the sunset painted above him.

The summer is nearly over when Stiles decides to join him one evening. They kiss, the cool water wrapped around them, hands tracing bodies they used to know so well but haven’t used for much lately except keeping warm at night. They float together, hands twined as the light dies above them, and then they have sex on their nest of blankets on the cabin floor. Chris has never been sentimental, but he thinks it might be making love.

By the time fall descends around them, colouring their world vivid and bright, the cabin is finished and they’re closer than ever, kisses and touches and sweetness shared between them as easily as in those early days, before the world fell apart around them, before they remembered they weren’t built to win.

They wake with the sun, Stiles somehow always squinting with the brightness as he steps outside to use the rainwater shower, never really awake until the cold water has washed over him. Sometimes he drags Chris in with him to keep him warm and Chris never complains. They live off the land, Chris hunting for meat, Stiles setting up a vegetable garden that he tends to daily with such care that Chris is addicted to watching him.

It’s a life. It’s their lives. They’ve earned it, have fixed what was broken and built up the rest around them. Chris thinks the cabin still suits their moods perfectly, a thing of beauty that was almost lost to neglect but was saved by love.


End file.
